


hard times

by sparkling_cider



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 1936 was a bad year, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, dark subjects handled badly (sorry), it's the Great Depression and Steve sure is depressed, like kinda? - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 09:46:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18892123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkling_cider/pseuds/sparkling_cider
Summary: Steve is sad and drunk. Sorry, Steve.





	hard times

**Author's Note:**

> I'm having kind of a bad day, so instead of finishing my homework and going to bed at a reasonable time I wrote this. It's pretty bad; sorry about that. I just kind of want it to be out of my google drive.

Steve Rogers, age nineteen, is angry. He's angry at a lot of things — he made an alphabetized list once, when he was drunk off of the cheapest whiskey he could find, which was still way too expensive for him to afford but that he bought nonetheless because it was either that or jump off a building, and he hasn't reached that point quite yet.

He's drunk more often than he should be but not as often as he would like. Steve's lucky he's such a lightweight, because it means that a single bottle of spirits can last for a month if he dilutes it enough.

Steve Rogers, age nineteen, is really fucking poor. He wears the same clothes he has for years and he eats boiled potatoes two meals a day and he spends hours drawing and redrawing cartoons, trying to write lightly so he won't wear away the pencil lead too quick. Sometimes, the cartoons get published. More often, they don't. What else is he supposed to do?

_This isn't sustainable_ , Bucky said once. Bucky is eighteen and going to college. Bucky isn't particularly handsome, but his lungs work fine and his back isn't crooked. Bucky has three younger sisters and two parents and a chance of making it in America. Steve hates his best friend sometimes, seethes with jealousy until he can't breathe for it.

That makes him mad too, predictably. Steve is so tired of himself.

His ma. It's all his ma's fault, Sarah Rogers who had to go and become a nurse and catch tuberculosis and  _die_. She's dead, and other people are alive. It's not like anything has ever been fair, but this is a whole new level of… of something.

Steve is drunk, actually. There's a pencil in his hand and a sketchbook on the run-down table that he uses for nearly everything. He's not drawing in the sketchbook even though he should be. He had planned to submit — something to somewhere, he doesn't know what or where anymore, needs to drink water and go to bed so he can make it to work in the morning.

He puts his pencil down and drops his head on the table, which wobbles. He hates that wobble more than anything else in the world, probably, except for maybe himself. Steve does not have particularly good ways of dealing with his problems. Maybe he should see if he can figure out how to fix the crooked leg, which is the source of the problem, except he knows he can't; partly because he doesn't know how and partly because he doesn't have the right tools.

Incidentally, he does know someone with both the tools and the skills. That person is Bucky, whom Steve currently hates even more than he hates the wobble, or maybe more than he hates himself; he's already forgotten which he's decided is worse. Bucky, who pretends he doesn't look at boys because he's a fucking  _coward_ , Bucky who's going to marry some girl he doesn't love because he may not even all that handsome but who can at least walk up a flight of stairs without having an asthma attack. Bucky, who can be a dick but who is now the most important person in Steve's life.

Steve's had all these thoughts so many times before. The table sways underneath his forehead, and he wishes, the way he does every five minutes or so, that he were dead.

Steve Rogers, age nineteen, is drunk and tired and suicidal. At least, he thinks moments before passing out for the night, he isn't angry anymore.


End file.
